Hydroponics Beginner Guide – Grow Box Guide – Indoor Gardening Basics
What are hydroponics Grow Boxes?
Hydroponics is a type of gardening that uses water, nutrients, and lighting. Basically, there are 3 phases in growing with hydroponics and a number of key components.
The most important part is either the hydroponics system, or to choose one of the many hydroponics grow boxes. The grow box, or hydroponic system acts as an ecosystem for your indoor garden. Even if you put your grow boxes outdoors, it’s called indoor gardening because the walls of the grow box conceal what’s inside from the outdoors.
The components needed are the outer shell, the lighting system (which includes the ballast and all electronics) and the hydroponic bucket (to hold plants). The outer shell is a cover and ecosystem so that the lighting is not wasted and is focused on the plants themselves. Usually the inside of the grow box is covered in some type of reflective material that helps to give the most light to the plants.The lighting acts as sunlight to your plants in the grow box. Your grow box’s hydroponics bucket will have water mixed with the right amount of nutrients in it.
How hydroponic grow box systems are operated.
There are basically 3 phases in hydroponic gardening.
Cloning. This is where your first 3 plants are placed. You must grow these plants in soil and place them in this area. This area has it’s own lighting conditions in the grow box. What you need to do is take cuttings from your mother plant and place them in the clone area. Your clones will develop and turn into tiny plants. The mother can be reused over and over again.
Vegetation. This is where your tiny plants become baby sized plants. They sit in this area for a short time until that are mature enough so that the roots are at least long enough to be put in the flowering stage. This area also has it’s own lighting system. The grow box has 3 different areas for growth – mother/clone, vegetative, and flowering stage.
Flowering. The baby plants (with roots dangling) are put in the flowering area. This area of the grow box also has it’s own lighting. The plants sit in this area for about a month until they are fully grown. Although a month sounds a bit fast, you will soon discover using hydroponics grows your plants much faster than traditional gardening.
And finally, your plants grow to maturity and you can harvest them. After harvesting, you should have other plants in the vegetative stage that can be placed in the flowering stage.
Recommended lighting for your plants.
The lighting is one of the important aspects of any grow box. In the older days, people used powerful lights that sucked up power, used too much energy, and gave off too much heat. Now, the best type of lighting is HPS. HPS stands for High Pressure Sodium. The reason for this is that HPS lighting is just as powerful and gives off very little heat, and uses very little energy. Plus it’s a very warm light that plants like for flowering. A full 6 foot grow box system should only take as much energy as a refrigerator or living room television. Grow boxes today typically use a 400w or 600w HPS lamp. This ensures low power usage and gives off a very small amount of heat.
You can also use MH (metal halide) lights for your grow boxes in the vegetation stage. This is a nice cool light that allows your plants to grow fast and strong. You can even setup MH lights to run 24 hours a day in the vegetative stage for faster growing.
Reputable hydroponic retailers.
Grow boxes are the most serious type of hydroponics growing. They are usually tweaked to help the plants grow the fastest, with the most amount of light, and the least amount of odor or pests. There are a number of grow box manufacturers out there, but my favorite is BC Northern Lights. Mainly for the tech support and the high quality of parts. Check them out at http://www.bcnorthernlights.com or leave a comment on this page if you have had any experience with them.